Blame Lidge's Meltdowns on Garner
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by user ASwaff
After watching future Hall-of-Famer Trevor Hoffman collapse with two outs in the ninth inning of the All-Star Game tonight, I got to thinking - maybe Phil Garner just has some kind of bad mojo that causes closers to not be able to do their job. Some kind of energy that radiates from him, a kind of energy whose mere presence causes even the best of closers to wilt and fail.
Perhaps Brad Lidge isn't to blame as much as we've though for his sudden inability to perform.
Maybe we've had it wrong all along. Well, I know that the blame-Pujols-first crowd has had it wrong. Lidge's problems began well before Pujols took him deep in the NLCS last year. I watched Lidge through the entire 2005 season and could tell the whole time that he was not the same pitcher. Sure he still had a phenomenal 2.29 ERA. Sure he had 42 saves in 46 chances, an even better percentage than his breakout season in 2004. And yes, even his strikeouts were coming at an incredible pace of 13.12 per nine innings. But there were other indicators, other signs of gathering storm clouds.
His hits per nine were up by almost two (7.39). Although he was holding batters to a still solid .223 average, that was a significant increase from the .174 average they had against him the year before. There were other problems not shown so easily by statistics. For example, he suddenly seemed to struggle to throw his slider for strikes. Why this did not catch up to him until last year's NLCS, we will probably never know. But the point is, this is not a psychological problem. Lidge lost his stuff.
The thing is, even though I realized that his problems began well in advance of that NLCS game, I had no idea until tonight just how early his problems started. They didn't even begin during the 2005 season. Garner's mojo has been working against Lidge for almost two years now.
Oh sure, the unsuperstitious critic will point out that in the 2004 playoffs (with Garner), Lidge had a 0.73 ERA in 12.1 innings in the 2004 playoffs, while going 1-0 with three saves. And yes, they will probably point out that he had 20 strikeouts in those 12.1 innings, including 14 in 8 innings in the NLCS against the St. Louis Cardinals.
But, as with the phenomenon with the slow repurcussion of not being able to throw a slider for a strike, the slow working of Garner's mojo cannot easily be explained. This is mojo, powers beyond humanly comprehension. Otherworldly powers that are not to be underestimated.
Why did Garner's anti-closer mojo work so much faster on Hoffman than it did Lidge? Again, the world may never know. And perhaps we never should. Perhaps some things are better left uninvestigated. But the answer for Lidge is clear - get a new team or get a new manager. Because as long as Garner and his mojo are in Houston, the Astros will never again have a successful closer.
Date
Tue 07/11/06, 8:47 pm EST
